Skift Take

London plans to avoid the mistakes of its predecessors by building temporary venues and breaking down new facilities into smaller buildings, but only time will tell the fate of the city’s new vast parking lots.

— Samantha Shankman

With the close of the Summer Games Sunday comes the toughest contest of all: the one in which London vies to overcome the curse of the Games themselves. Some experts say that few, if any, Olympic host cities of recent memory reaped long-term economic rewards. Nowhere is that more evident than in Athens, where eight years after the estimated $15 billion Summer Games, abandoned venues and empty parking lots stretch across the city–hunkering monuments to the dark consequences of welcoming the world into your living room.